The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus

(Abkco Films, 10.12.2004)

Spiffily restored, sonically impeccable and bursting at the seams with extra features, this admirable DVD also explains why its epochal 1968 show in an intimate circus tent by the Stones, The Who, and a Lennon/Clapton/Mitch Mitchell/Keith Richards supergroup got lost for decades in Ian Stewart's barn.

Commentary tracks by Jagger and director Michael Lindsay-Hogg downplay the long-dominant rumor that the Stones' performance, mostly of Beggar's Banquet tunes, was bad, and upstaged by the soon-to-be-operatic Who's dazzling performance of the proto-Tommy tune "A Quick One While He's Away." They claim the film was shelved more because of imminent corpse-to-be Brian Jones' sad, stoned state in his last Stones appearance.

Indeed, the non-doomed Stones are good, considering they were knackered after 16 hours of stage-managing other acts (including then-obscure Jethro Tull, Taj Mahal, and some lousy acrobats there to fulfill the Fellini-derived cheesy-circus concept). The never-before-seen takes by Taj and Lennon's band are solid. It's priceless to see Jagger and Lennon clown it up, with Jagger impersonating their soulless manager Allen Klein (who gives Abko its name). "Ah, those were the days!" Lennon faux-reminisces.

Jagger sings "You Can't Always Get What You Want" directly into the astoundingly gorgeous face of Marianne Faithfull. Her own performance lacks the confidence and gritty timbre that today redeem her once-annoying vibrato, but her commentary and Rolling Stone's David Dalton are the best. Jagger wrote the song to implore her not to die on heroin. She almost did soon after, and about one-third of the performers on this DVD were on junk, including Lennon, desperate not to vomit on-camera onto his toddler son, whom he was Courtney Lovesquely looking after.

Heroin was the sympathetic devil in the song (inspired by the book Faithfull gave him, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita), poignantly sung here. Faithfull explains that Jagger was never a devotee of Satan but, she allows, "a devotee of satin, perhaps." -- Tim Appelo